I've never gotten the New York City obsession. Hey, I live here now and it's great a lot of the times, but it sucks a whole lot of other times. What'sI've never gotten the New York City obsession. Hey, I live here now and it's great a lot of the times, but it sucks a whole lot of other times. What's amazing about Colson Whitehead's new book, Zone One, is that he gets the obsession (hell, his main character is that wanna-be New Yorker even as he fight zombies and post-apocalyptic depression) and is able to parse out what makes this city so beguiling and so soul-destroying in the same breath. It's a joy to read someone so thoroughly unpack that striving, I-can-make-it-here-even-if-I-have-to-gut-everyone-else-in-this-place attitude that is so New York.

It's also a story about zombies, one guy called Mark Spitz (a well-earned nickname) fighting the good zombie-destroying fight, and the other survivors trying their best to make it through another day in this sad sack of a world. It's not clear how the infection starts (unlike Resident Evil and almost every other zombie narrative out there, there isn't a evil corporation or government entity specifically to blame for this mess) but it's easy to blame the shadowy government scientists at Headquarters, here hilariously located in Buffalo NY. And the optimistically renamed settlements that the survivors have managed to eke out of a zombie overrun world are just so spot-on: Happy Acres, Bubbling Brooks, Victory's Sword.

There's gore and swarming zombies and great imaginative details about how you would go about trying to reconstruct civilization from all this mayhem. What binds people together and keeps them throwing each other off roofs to save themselves.

It's a fantastic book, one that keeps you enthralled, page after page. And for all you through-and-through New Yorkers out there, it is a haunting homage to your city. Because: "It wasn't anyplace else. It was New York City."...more

Still a good read, but didn't wow me as previous Homes' books have (Music for Torching, anyone??). The ending was disappointing and expected. Parts ofStill a good read, but didn't wow me as previous Homes' books have (Music for Torching, anyone??). The ending was disappointing and expected. Parts of it though are just as amazing and bizarrely hilarious and disturbing as Homes' best books....more

I was prompted to read this book after seeing the Court Theatre of Chicago's powerful adaptation. It's unbelievable (and downright heartbreaking) howI was prompted to read this book after seeing the Court Theatre of Chicago's powerful adaptation. It's unbelievable (and downright heartbreaking) how much this novel speaks to our modern American life and our inability to address (or even admit to) centuries of continued racial injustice and victimization/vilification of African Americans (among other minorities).

It's not a perfect book by any means, and I did get bogged down from time to time with Wright's ideological prose, but it is a great and important book of the American 20th Century that eloquently captures the hopelessness and inchoate rage of the oppressed.